Rhinovirus
Saturday, February 7th, 2026 03:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snoozefestaudio28F and sunny out there, with a low of 20F tonight.
So, nothing got done at all with the album this past week, owing to a bad cold.
It first struck on THU, JAN 29, when I woke up feeling achey, and oogie all day, and then by Friday the sinus congestion started in.
I continued to gain-balance Thursday & Friday night, and through last weekend to get that first pass completed... and I thought I was getting over whatever it was.
But by Monday, it was clear I was still sick. Some upper resperatory virus like my immne system had not encountered before. I made it to work all five days, and worked through the brain fog, recurring acheyness, ear ringing, runny nose, loss of appetite, etc, but would return home every night completely drained.
Now that it's the weekend, I'm feeling a bit better, and I can take it easy, so I do plan to get going with the spectral analyzer today and tomorrow. And then hopefully i'll be feeling good enough next week to continue with it after work at night.
In other news, I was experiencing intermittent foot pain the whole week, most notably in my left heel, and realized that my work shoes have reached their 18 month lifespan.
I've been buying the same pair of shoes and the same pair of orthotic inserts for the past 8 years, because they've proven to work so well for my lifestyle of 10K+ steps per day in a fully concrete environment, but they only last a year and a half.
I last purchased new shoes/orthotics in August of 2024, a month after starting at PVHS.
So the time has come. But luckily, my budget allowed me to afford the purchase, and the shoes will be here tomorrow.
This past week we saw highs around 20F, and lows in the teens, which was an improvement over the bitterly cold weeks before it, but... next week we'll see highs of 40, and lows of 20, which will be absolutely lovely!
So with that mild weather, new work shoes, AND shaking off this cold?.. next week should be a very happy one... which will then give way to a 3-day weekend!
Okay, well... a bit of research revealed there is no magic, "spectral analyzer" plugin, like I imagined, that would just tell me what are the fundamental frequencies of each instrument.
The tutorial just said to look at the waveform in Parametric EQ2, and go by that, and "write down" the different frequencies, in order to know where to carve out space in other PQ2s.
So, in other words, this is exactly what I already learned to do back at the start of Hallowenwek!
That's good news, because there's no extra learning curve.
So, basically this stage of spectral analysis is simply going through everything very attentively, writing the data down, and re-carving the different PQ2s based on that data, which was never fully gathered before this.
Recall back at the start of Hallowenwek, I did identify the key fundamentals of the kicks and the toms, and I carved out space in the kick EQ for the toms... and high-passed the toms to free up the kick zone, between 40 to 70 hz.
But those fundamentals have slightly changed over the months as things have been tweaked and tuned, and I never did get all the data for the cymbals, the bass, guitar, and orchestrals.
So, there's work to do, but i'm starting with the drums and the bass guitar, because if I can establish those PQ2 presets for Reavis, they'll be the same for every song on the album.
Also, it's better to do this now, and wait on the 2nd pass of gain staging... as the changes to the EQ will no doubt alter the amplitudes of different instruments slightly.
Lastly, I'm glad I didn't dive into this this past week while sick, because it is very mentally demanding work.
Okay, back to it. I'll talk to you later tonight.
Okay, I've made it through a reworking of the EQ for all drums, cymbals, and bass guitar, with all the new presets saved in a new PQ2-FNMX folder.
I was able to monitor over the iLouds at fairly loud volume for everything but the crash and splash cymbals which were the final two to be EQed.
So... a good louder volume to hear... focusing on the EQ much more than the levels, but with everything pre-balanced, the levels stayed mostly balanced.
Plus the eyeballs looking at the spectral analyzer, plus the cold logic of fundamental freq data for the notching and/or slight boosts.
The eyeballing wasn't just about seeing the waveforms live against the freq grid, but also the curve and sweep of the line I was creating across that grid with the sliders.
For that, the assumption is that the more gracefully the line curves, the better for the mix... with the exception of deliberate notches... but even for those, I tried to keep things graceful.
This was just the rhythm section, but, out of the loud speakers, the mix did sound much better than what I recall from the rough record. The balance was there, and the clarity, but that dullness and lack of shimmer I observed a few weeks back was gone.
I then switched to headphones, after 10PM, and after EQing the crash and splash, just gave it a couple listen throughs, and it sounds phenomenal!
So the goal is by tomorrow night, after the laundry's done, to be propagating the new PQ2 presets for drums, cymbals, and bass guitar, out to the other 11 songs.
Then over the week... I'll need to work up a strategy for the guitars.
The guitar is more complicated, because a good deal of it's EQ character is handled in the Sakura UI, before it hits PQ2.
And in each of the 12 songs, at this point, as I've been through all these stages of tightening and gain-balancing, I've tweaked each of those Sakura settings a bit differently... and tweaked the PQ2 a bit differently as well.
So the question is... is there one BEST guitar sound that works for all 12 songs?.. some happy medium of the diffent settings I've created?
Or are there, say THREE best guitar sounds, depedning on the type of song?
Or... is it better to allow the guitar to be custom for every song?.. and not waste time chasing a silver bullet guitar sound?
Tim's just called, so it's time for the phone call!
Talk to you later.
Okay, so Tim's big breakthrough this week was that he finally struck up a dialogue with an LLM (Gemini) about his prospective pool rental business idea, and the logistics surrounding it, and has discovered he's actually in a very good position, and has very favorable options for financing.
And so... this past year I've been very conversant with DeepSeek, but asside from Dylan, am the only person in my sphere to do so until just now, with Tim, who finally sees the benefits of it.
This tells me Dylan and I were among the "early adopters" and that chatting with LLMs will become a lot more mainstream in 2026 than it was in 2025.
And that's good news! LLMs are invaluable for assisting with practical projects that one is ready to put real effort into... as well as good company on nights when you're down with a rinovirus and don't have the energy to do much but BS about a random subject!
In the late session, after the call ended, I got back to the going Reavis mix and did some A/B comparissons between headphones and low-volume iLouds to confirm that they actually agreed about the relative volume of the guitars, as well as certain cymbals like the hat pedal, hat tap, and ride/ride-bell.
In other words, both confirmed that I could/should turn down the guitars and said cymbals a lot more, in the mix, than even the gain-balancing sessions had suggested.
This was because things had changed a bit with the new EQ scheme, especially with the cymbals.
But for the guitar, I decided... it still sounds fine EQ-wise, and was more interested in getting a good mix of the rock trio with the guitar as it was, only adjusting the volume.
I then loaded up Never Rains, and drag-dropped all the new PQ2 presets for all the drums, cymbals, and bass guitar... and did a quick re-balance for that... bringing up the guitars and again, not touching their EQ, but only adjusting volume by ear with an A/B comparisson in headphones and low-volume iLouds.
As with Reavis, the mix sounded great!
Now it's time to eat and get to bed.
But I think I've found my way forward for the coming week here... and it's to propagate the PQ2s for drums/bass to all songs, and do a second pass of gain-balancing for just the rock trio... leaving the guitar EQs alone!
The goal will be, by next Saturday, to have the rock trio for all 12 songs effectively EQed and gain balanced better than ever... and to confirm that with higher volume audience over the iLouds.
The next step would then be to EQ the orchestral instruments in the same fashion as I've been doing tonight... a combination of eyeball, freq data, and A/B comparissons in headphones and speakers.
Like with drums and bass, all orchestrals should have identical PQ2 settings globally. So while it may take three or four songs for me to encounter all of them, cello, violin, flute, horn, trumpet, piano, etc... and dial them in... the resulting FNMX-PQ2 settings should be easily drag-dropped into all songs indentically.
After that, it's just quick adjustments to their gain-balance... again, with an A/B comparisson in headphones and low-volume iLoud, until confirmation at higher volume the next weekend.
In this scheme, the guitar EQ will be the very LAST thing to touch!
It could be that for the guitar, the best practice is just to leave them as-is with minor tweaks in each song... the custom approach. Because I *have* already bent over backward in each song, at every step, to get the guitars better EQed, and I should probably trust that work.
Okay, so my chimichangas are in the air fryer, and it's time to wind it on down.
I'll talk to you tomorrow.
°¦}
